Some years ago, when I found myself passionate so much for Jesus, I just got extreme in my philosophies. I believed and thought to myself, “I do not want to be a theologian, I want to be a person of God..” This perhaps was not just because of my heart burning for Jesus but because of some arrogant theologians that I met along the way. Nonetheless, as time went by, the Lord taught me that as His follower, as His child, I have to grow in His knowledge. And that a person of God is also a sound theologian.
With sound theology, our faith will not be easily shaken. With the Biblical understanding of God, we are sure that we will also not feed the flock with poisonous philosophies. Hence, as a commissioner of God, we are to be ready to defend our faith because there is a flock under our care to be protected.
Jesus asked Peter three times if he truly loves Him, and everytime Peter says yes, Jesus would tell him to feed and take care of the flock. Thus, if we truly love the Lord, we are to make sure that we know God and His Word well. Apologetics and our grasp of Christian history and facts should be sturdy then.
Apologetics is important and we can only be effective in it if our philosophy about God is truly Biblical. Christian History and facts are important also especially when we go to places where there are many “stoics” and “epicureans” who will shaken our faith or the faith of those who are under our care.
Both apologetics and evidences (history) are God’s tools to save us from false teaching and actually, to save us from ourselves as well. On my end, I still find myself in crisis of some sort at times. I have questions about God and His mysterious dealings in the world from time to time. But the Word of God tells us so much that all these crises do not take so long to linger and that God remains to be God as the absolute authority and Creator designer of all things.
God is eternal, infinite, unchanging holy and so forth. He is not created by anything / anyone but He is the Creator Himself. He is not bond by anything that any of our language could speak, not any third party at all. He exists outside all of these, be it time, language and so forth.
God is absolute. He is God. He cannot be explained fully because if He can be, He is not God anymore. No one is capable of knowing it all about Him but we are called to know Him anyway. We are to understand all that we can about Him and not all that there is because the infinite God forever have the mystery that only Him can decide whether it shall be revealed fully to us or not.
Week 6
Digest, Sept.28-Oct.4, 2022
Lanilane Ocbina
WCTS, ThM program
